Some people reading this may know that I also have a political blog. I tend to keep politics there, while using this one to comment on our culture. However, when the subject of a post is addressing how much politics and culture do or don't intersect, I obviously have to choose one or the other. Because I'm going to keep present-day political issues mostly out of this most, I am choosing to put it here.
Moving right along, it's becoming increasingly obvious that many popular works of fiction are pushing an agenda of some sorts these days. Films like the 2016 Ghostbusters reboot and Star Wars: The Last Jedi, and TV shows like Steven Universe, all have received attention for promoting and demoting specific sorts of people and/or values; a summation that is hard to dispute when both their fans and detractors agree on this basic point. When it comes to the points these people disagree on, a common accusation that detractors make is that media seeking a wide audience shouldn't go out of its way to include a political message; to which the defenders often retort that all fiction includes some kind of political message, so it's hypocritical to start complaining about just some of them.
How true is this defense? Well, "all" is such a strong word that I'm not ready to concede that, but I will acknowledge that lots of fiction says something political if you look hard enough. However, the issue with bringing this up, as a defense of an individual work's political themes, is that not all political statements are created equal. The context that they are made in varies. The audience varies. The degree to which a statement is made a focus varies. All of these things are key to understanding the difference between observing trends and starting trends.
Let's go back to Ghostbusters. The political messages of this series were actually being talked about long before the 2016 reboot, but "Racism is bad" isn't one of the messages of the original film. Yes; an African American joins an otherwise white team as part of the movie, but because nothing in the film depicts him having trouble getting in because he's black, that isn't a message; it's just a given. "Racism is bad" is a message in works like To Kill a Mockingbird or Blazing Saddles, as both depict a time when racism was more widespread and have characters learning not to hate a black character. Ghostbusters isn't like that; because it's more modern, it assumes people already consider racism bad, so its characters have no need to spend any time telling them that it is. No character in the film needs to act racist or crusade against racism because that issue is settled for everyone involved. That doesn't mean these films are afraid to get controversial, but to be controversial you have to make statements that are still contested.
Now let's move on to Star Wars, and whether accusations of a political agenda in The Last Jedi are frivolous, given this series has always had political themes. Before we go further, a disclosure: I gave up on the prequels after Episode 1; I'm sure I'll have to bend over and watch them at some point, but let's just stick to the original trilogy. The rather vague designation of "political themes" obviously does pertain to a film series about a rebel group going up against a tyrannical political regime, but Star Wars: A New Hope can't be described as having an agenda to convince people that regimes like the Empire are evil. The story it intends to tell requires viewers to understand this easily and willingly upon demonstration. The Death Star destroys the planet Alderan to demonstrate that the Empire is evil; not to demonstrate that mass-murder is evil--viewers are expected to understand that mass-murder is evil going into the film, because if they didn't the scene wouldn't serve a point, so the agenda of this film isn't to show that mass-murder is evil. By extension, that the rebels are still rebelling after this implies that life under the Empire has to be truly horrible for the people to risk losing everything trying to throw it off. Then, of course, there is the bit with some of the Imperial troops dressing and acting like the Nazis. The film is not an allegory for the Holocaust, but it expects viewers to be familiar enough with it that mere allusions help make the point.
In summary, political statements and political agendas are not the same thing, as the latter are pursued under the assumption that things aren't the way they should be. If things already are to your liking, you have no need for an agenda; you can just rest easy. You will have an easier time entertaining more people if they're already convinced of something. Future elaborations on this will probably go on my political blog instead, but for now, I hope I've explained enough nuance to better inform the subject of politics in entertainment from here on.
